ConnCAN's Education News Roundup

October 18, 2007

News Articles

School Redesign Procedure OK'd: Questions Remain About Assignment Of Teachers In Affected Facilities
By Rachel Gottlieb Frank, The Hartford Courant, October 17, 2007

The school board approved a plan Tuesday that roughly lays out the process for redesigning schools that consistently perform poorly, but it left vague questions about what will happen to teachers and other staff at schools that go through transformations.

Under the new policy, Hartford schools that perform substantially below the proficient level for two consecutive years without improvement, or fail to make adequate yearly progress under the No Child Left Behind law for five consecutive years, may be redesigned or their buildings may be used for a different purpose.

A Post-Katrina Charter School in New Orleans Gets a Second Chance
By Joseph Berger, The New York Times, October 17, 2007

Despite the heartbreaking destruction it left behind, Hurricane Katrina created tantalizing opportunities, including the chance of a fresh start for a majority of this city’s schools, which had been among the nation’s worst.

The remedy that officials chose was to turn 40 of the roughly 80 salvaged schools over to state-chartered and state-financed groups of business and community leaders, and to let them provide oversight with fewer of the bureaucratic rules that hobble school leaders. Conversion to charters is a free-market strategy that the Bush administration champions, and in Louisiana it backed its belief with $24 million.

Schools can handle racial achievement gap without task force, Republican candidate says
By, Christine McCluskey, The Journal Enquirer, October 15, 2007

MANCHESTER - A Board of Education candidate says his opponent's proposal for a task force on the racial achievement gap is well-intentioned, but bypasses the ongoing efforts of school-system administrators

"I just think that we have a lot of the experts right in our central office," Moran added.

Schools await OK for improvement plan
By Linda Conner Lambeck, The Connecticut Post, October 15, 2007

The state is withholding $2 million from Bridgeport schools until it can show how it will use the money to improve education. Local school officials submitted a plan to the state late last month, and Supt. of Schools John Ramos met with McQuillan last week.

The commissioner has offered to let the district stagger the assessments. Instead of having a consultant critique 18 schools this year, at a cost of $7,000 apiece, the district can do 12 this year and six next year, said Thomas Murphy a state Department of Education spokesman.

Rollback: School Integration Efforts Face Renewed Opposition; Supreme Court Ruling Sways Milton Battle; Off to Private School
By Joseph Pereira, Wall Street Journal, Oct 11, 2007

Last spring, town officials in this affluent Boston suburb changed the elementary-school assignments for 38 streets -- and sparked outrage. Some white families had been reassigned to Tucker, a mostly black school which has historically had Milton's lowest test scores.

Among those reassigned is Kevin Keating, a white parent who is talking to lawyers about going to court to reverse the plan. I "just don't feel good putting [my son] in an inferior school," he says. His ammunition: the U.S. Supreme Court's June ruling that consideration of race in school assignments is unconstitutional. Without the backing of the Supreme Court, Mr. Keating says his effort wouldn't have "much of a standing."